Chapter 10: The Unlabeled Tin

Linnea's POV

Soren told me what he had seen with my forehead still against his chest.

"Powder," I said. "Into Dane's cup."

"Yes."

"Can you swear it wasn't sugar?"

"No," Soren said, honestly. "I was a hundred yards away, in the dark."

"Then we can't use it."

"Linnea."

"If I stand up in that hall tomorrow and say the Prince saw a woman put something in a cup, they'll say the Lycans are trying to take the pack."

I stepped back. "I need the thing itself."

His jaw worked, and I knew he wanted to go down there and take the packhouse apart.

"How long do you need?"

"One morning."

I did not sleep.

I lay on my side of the pillows and replayed a kiss on a rock until the window went grey.

Then I got dressed in the dark, and went to the pack kitchen.

It was the room I knew best in the world.

I had learned to make bread at that long steel counter.

At six I had hidden under it during thunderstorms, with a flashlight and a cookie.

At five-thirty, it was empty. The ovens ticked, cooling.

I started at the pantry door.

Flour. Sugar. Oats. The row of tins on the third shelf, labeled in Sydney's round handwriting: chamomile, mint, lemon balm, rosehip.

I opened each one and smelled it.

At the back of the shelf, behind a bag of rice, sat a tin with no label.

It was small and dented. When I pried the lid off, a faint, bitter, sweetish smell rose out of it.

It was the same smell I had caught on Sydney's cardigan at the gate.